{"id":9155,"slug":"apple-albums-vs-songs-african-share-robustness-2026","title":"Robustness of the Apple Music albums-versus-songs African-share finding, 41 African markets, 16 August to 4 November 2026","source":"This desk's own Apple Music daily chart collection and its own artist-origin registry, recomputed under restriction","source_url":"","source_type":"computed","method":"Four recomputations of the same panel-level African-share measure for the albums and songs chart. Row 1 is the published measure. Row 2 removes the two home markets with the single highest African share on both chart types, Nigeria and Egypt, to test whether the gap is a home-chart artefact rather than a genuine cross-market pattern. Row 3 removes 375 distinct album identifiers credited to \"Various Artists\" or similar compilation credits, which have no single lead artist and cannot match the registry, to test whether that denominator noise depresses the albums share specifically. Row 4 removes the three artists supplying the most African-origin albums-chart positions, Asake, Ayra Starr and Omah Lay, all Nigerian, to test whether a handful of artists carry the entire albums-side African presence. ratio_songs_over_albums is the songs share divided by the albums share in each row; the published row and all three restrictions put it between 1.89 and 1.95, so the roughly two-to-one gap survives every test applied.","unit":"count","license":"Afrobeats Wire's compilation and analysis are licensed CC BY 4.0. Rights in the underlying source data remain with the source named above.","confidence":"medium","retrieved":"2026-11-05 01:50:33","n":4,"first_party":0,"columns":[{"key":"restriction","label":"Restriction applied","type":"text"},{"key":"albums_share_pct","label":"African share, albums (%)","type":"number"},{"key":"songs_share_pct","label":"African share, songs (%)","type":"number"},{"key":"ratio_songs_over_albums","label":"Songs share \/ albums share","type":"number"},{"key":"what_it_tests","label":"What it tests","type":"text"}],"rows":[{"restriction":"No restriction, all charting positions","albums_share_pct":7.31,"songs_share_pct":14.23,"ratio_songs_over_albums":1.95,"what_it_tests":"The published measure."},{"restriction":"Excluding Nigeria and Egypt, the two home markets with the highest African share","albums_share_pct":6.83,"songs_share_pct":13.19,"ratio_songs_over_albums":1.93,"what_it_tests":"Nigeria and Egypt are each artists' home chart and carry the single highest African share of any market on both chart types. This tests whether the gap is only a home-chart effect."},{"restriction":"Excluding charting titles credited to \"Various Artists\"","albums_share_pct":7.42,"songs_share_pct":14.23,"ratio_songs_over_albums":1.92,"what_it_tests":"375 distinct album identifiers are compilation or various-artist credits with no single lead artist to match. This tests whether that clutter in the denominator depresses the albums-chart share."},{"restriction":"Excluding the three artists with the most African-origin album positions (Asake, Ayra Starr, Omah Lay)","albums_share_pct":6.38,"songs_share_pct":12.04,"ratio_songs_over_albums":1.89,"what_it_tests":"Tests whether the finding depends on three Nigerian artists who chart widely on the albums surface."}]}